PORTAFERRY rider Ellie McDonnell has eight ponies to campaign for the season and this year one of her main targets is to qualify for the Royal International Horse Show at Hickstead.

Ellie, who is now being coached by Emma Jackson, started her showing year in good form by claiming the supreme pony championship at the Easter Gala Show in Gransha with Goldengrove Sunrise. She was back at the Bangor venue last Saturday for an IPS (Northern Area) show where she landed the ridden supreme championship on Goldengrove Sunrise and the supreme working hunter championship with Sonny Bill Williams.

The rider, who enjoyed some hunting during the winter – and a week’s skiing – has qualified two working hunter ponies for the upcoming Northern Ireland Festival at Cavan. In total, there will be nine ponies heading to that three-day fixture from The Half Hill farm including the 18-year-old Shetland mare Barns Rosanna, the mount of Ellie’s younger brother Max.

Before then however, there is lorryload of ponies heading to today’s IPS show at the Causeway Coast Arena while tomorrow Ellie and Sonny Bill Williams will be representing Down High School at the TRI inter-schools show jumping league final at Mullingar.

Following the 150th anniversary Balmoral Show, it will be a matter of chasing HOYS and RIHS tickets for the Portaferry team, for whom a whistle-stop three-show trip in Britain will conclude at the Royal Highland Show outside Edinburgh (June 21st to 24th).

While pleased that her older ponies have been going well so far, McDonnell knows she needs younger ones coming on behind and was delighted when Goldengrove Sunrise’s five-year-old full-sister, Goldengrove Maydream, was show pony champion last Saturday.